We are focusing only on a few verses this morning, because there is a very important idea being communicated.  The background on this situation is movie-worthy...there is a small group of Christians gathering together and meeting, and like all churches they have sin festering inside of the church.  I say ‘like all churches’ because all of our churches are full of people and people sin.  And what’s happening here is that there is a young guy who is sleeping with what seems to be his father’s wife, which is likely his step-mother or his father’s ex-wife (not his birth mother though).  And, again, sin is sin and we all commit sins, and all sins are bad...but the issue here is the optics.  Everyone can see this sin, everyone knows about it - heck, Paul even knows about it and Paul is miles away without Internet or Facebook to hear about it.  The problem is that this is the very thing that makes it difficult for Christians to be attractive and inviting to outsiders...outsiders look at what’s going on and what Christians proclaim to be all about and immediately see the hypocrisy.

Now, we all know that both Christians and non-Christians commit sins of all kinds, and we all know that Christians don’t claim to be sinless, but some sins (like this one) are an obstruction to the mission of the church, which is to bring people into the faith.  Further, different sins (while ALL offensive to God) require different remedies.

Paul is suggesting that the church send this guy out and let him do his thing, to love him from a distance instead of IN the group, so as to not hinder others from coming to Christ.  Paul ISN’T saying throw him out and forget him.  Paul isn’t saying that this guy is any less a person and any less deserving of forgiveness and grace...Paul is saying that UNTIL THIS GUY COMES BACK OF HIS OWN FREE WILL, we should let him walk in the direction that he is already heading.  That’s the judgement Paul has placed on him.  And here is where the church and Christians get into trouble...we tell the world that affairs are wrong, and people on the outside see us ‘judging them’ in that sense, and if we don’t do the same with our own folks INSIDE of the church, we will be nothing by hypocrites.  Again though, there is a difference between asking this guy not to come back to their gathering until he repents of his sin and shunning him, dropping him from your life, and withholding forgiveness.  And, we don’t know anything more than what’s in these couple of verses, but we have to assume this has been going on for a bit and that initial discussions about this, and attempts to stop this, have been unsuccessful.  So, we are down the road with this thing.

The point of today is that judgement INSIDE the church is important - we should have enough love for each other and enough mutual respect to hold each other accountable to the standards to which we are all committing.  It isn’t that we should hold each other perfectly accountable, it is that we should hold each other accountable to moving in a direction of growth.  And as soon as someone knowingly moves in the other direction, they should be approached, and it should be addressed...at least that is what Paul seems to think.